Top Chef Canada: Episode 1:

Voila, my  Top Chef Canada observations:

1. I loved the Filet-O-Fish challenge.  What happened to all those fish afterward– staff meal?

2. Tarragon +Hollandaise = Béarnaise.  I have to ask, “What were you thinking chefs who added tarragon in the “Hollandaise challenge”?”  (though I do prefer a Béarnaise sauce and understand that if you’re hungry and craving steak frites your impulses might get the better of you.)

3. Go Chef Connie DeSousa.  She is my fave.  Did you see how calm she was during the challenges?  Calm and deceptively fast I bet.  And the woman MADE a sausage for the first cooking challenge.  I think if you’ve made a sausage you should win the whole show automatically. (Plus she can butcher a pig’s head in 4 minutes.  Hello!)

4. Most heart-wrenching moment–when Francois Gagnon‘s spoon hovered over his plate and the timer went off and he was not allowed to sauce his dish.  No sauce?  Quelle horreur!  Luckily–he kicked ass anyway.  (WHAT WAS THE SAUCE!  I missed it.)

5. Moment of deflated elation:  When Rob Rossi won the elimination challenge and $2500 worth of Le Creuset cookware.  But then I realized that $2500 worth of Le Creuset only buys you about 2 large Dutch ovens (cassoulet for everyone!) and then a bunch of those little oven-safe pots that you think you’ll use to serve individual souffles or hot artichoke dip in but never do–eventually relegating them to paperclip or raisin storage.

See you next week (oh, except for Chef Michael Stauffer (he was the one that served the “vomit sauce” with his lamb–I would have eaten the lamb that rare (raw-re?) by the way Michael…..)